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Search engineering that starts at the crawl: a sound technical foundation, migrations that keep the rankings you have already earned, and content planned from real demand, measured in Search Console rather than promised.

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Best practices for secure coding

A working checklist for input validation, secrets and dependency hygiene, written for small teams.

TitleDescriptionCanonicalSchema
Start with
Technical SEO audit
Ways to engage
Fixed price, time and materials
Works to
Google Search Essentials, Core Web Vitals, Schema.org
Reply time
Within 24 hours

Who it is for.

If you run a business

You want to be found for what you do, in the places you serve, by people ready to get in touch.

Sound familiar?

  • Competitors appear for searches you should own.
  • Traffic fell after a redesign, and nobody knows why.
  • Your Google Business Profile is incomplete or unclaimed.
  • Articles get written, and nobody reads them.

If you lead a technology team

You are replatforming, consolidating domains or shipping a JavaScript front end, and you need the search risk engineered out: URL mapping, rendering, canonicals, hreflang and monitoring after cutover.

Sound familiar?

  • Search Console shows pages crawled but not indexed.
  • Content renders client-side and rankings are unstable.
  • Parameters, trailing slashes or old domains create duplicate URLs.
  • A migration is scheduled without a redirect map.

What changes.

What you can hold the work to, in plain terms.

  1. 01

    Every important page crawled, rendered and indexed.

    Crawl paths, rendering and canonical signals fixed, so search engines spend their attention on the pages that earn you business.

  2. 02

    Migrations without a cliff.

    Old URLs mapped one to one, redirects tested before cutover and monitored after, so the equity follows the content.

  3. 03

    Content that answers real questions.

    Topics chosen from search demand and intent, organised into clusters that lead back to the services they support.

  4. 04

    Reporting you can check.

    Search Console, server logs and field data rather than vanity dashboards: what moved, why it moved and what comes next.

From crawl to click.

Search is a pipeline. Each stage fails in its own way, and each one can be measured.

Six stages: discover (XML sitemaps, internal links), crawl (robots.txt, status codes, crawl budget), render (JavaScript, hydration, lazy content), index (canonicals, hreflang, duplicates), rank (intent, entities, E-E-A-T, page experience) and click and cite (titles, rich results and citations in AI answers). Measured with Search Console, server logs, field Core Web Vitals and citations in AI answers. Migrations use a redirect map checked before and after cutover, for example /web-development/ to /services/web-design-development/ with a 301.

Fig. 1 The search pipeline and what we control at each stage. The redirect rows are real entries from this site's own migration.
A magnifying loupe resting on a printed site-structure diagram of boxes and lines, three boxes marked with orange dots.

What we bring.

The disciplines inside this service, and the detail we work to in each.

  • 01

    Technical SEO

    The crawl, render and index layers, audited with a crawler, your server logs and Search Console together.

    • Crawlability, status codes and robots rules
    • JavaScript rendering and hydration
    • Canonicals, parameters and duplicates
    • XML sitemaps and index coverage
  • 02

    Migrations and replatforming

    The riskiest moment in a site's search life, planned and rehearsed like any other cutover.

    • URL inventory from crawl, logs and analytics
    • One-to-one redirect map
    • Pre-launch verification on staging
    • Post-launch monitoring and fixes
  • 03

    Structured data

    Schema.org markup that makes templates eligible for rich results, validated on every release.

    • Organisation, service, article, breadcrumb
    • Product and merchant data
    • Author and date markup that supports E-E-A-T
    • Validation built into CI
  • 04

    Content strategy

    Topic clusters built from demand and intent, briefed for writers who know the subject.

    • Keyword research and clustering
    • Search intent mapped to pages
    • Briefs with sources and outlines
    • Content decay reviews and refreshes
  • 05

    Local search

    For businesses that serve an area: profiles, citations and location pages done properly.

    • Google Business Profile
    • Consistent name, address and phone
    • Location and service-area pages
    • Guidance on collecting reviews
  • 06

    Measurement and AI visibility

    What changed and why, from sources that cannot flatter, including how often AI assistants cite you when they answer questions in your field.

    • Search Console and GA4, set up properly
    • Log-file analysis of crawler behaviour
    • Field Core Web Vitals from CrUX
    • Citations in AI answers, tracked
    • Looker Studio or BigQuery reporting
    • Roadmap reviews on a fixed cadence

Every old URL gets a decision.

A rebuild usually loses search traffic through URLs nobody mapped. Every URL gets one of four decisions, recorded before launch and checked after it.

DecisionWhenWhat happens to its signalsHow it is checked
KeepWhenThe URL still fits the new structure.What happens to its signalsNothing moves. Content, title, canonical and structured data must match or improve.How it is checkedA parity diff of old and new on staging.
301 to one pageWhenThe content moved to a new address.What happens to its signalsLinks and relevance consolidate on the new URL as it is recrawled.How it is checkedOne hop, straight to a page that returns 200, never a chain.
301 mergeWhenTwo thin or competing pages become one stronger page.What happens to its signalsSignals consolidate on the surviving URL, ending the cannibalisation.How it is checkedThe merged page answers both searches it replaces.
410 GoneWhenThe content has no successor worth sending anyone to.What happens to its signalsCrawlers are told the removal is deliberate, and the URL leaves the index.How it is checkedInternal links to it are removed before launch.

This site's own move off WordPress follows the same rules: blog URLs unchanged, and every other change a recorded decision.

How it runs.

Every stage ends with a document you keep and a gate you can check.

  1. 01

    Audit

    What blocks search engines, and what your customers actually search for.

    Exit gate: Issues ranked by impact and effort, and the order agreed with you.

    • Full crawl
    • Log analysis
    • Search Console

    You receivePrioritized issue list

  2. 02

    Fix

    Technical and on-page changes shipped, then verified in the index.

    Exit gate: Each change confirmed in the rendered HTML and in Search Console.

    • Rendering
    • Canonical rules
    • Structured data

    You receiveChanges live and verified

  3. 03

    Grow

    Content that answers the questions you should rank for next.

    Exit gate: Every brief maps to one search intent and one page.

    • Clustering
    • Briefs
    • Internal links

    You receiveContent plan and briefs

  4. 04

    Measure

    Movement tracked against the baseline, and the plan adjusted.

    Exit gate: Results read against the baseline, with dates and sources, and the next priorities agreed.

    • Baseline
    • Reporting
    • Roadmap review

    You receiveReport and next priorities

What is in scope.

Written down before work starts, so nothing is assumed.

Included

  • Technical audit: crawling, rendering, indexing, speed, structured data
  • URL mapping and redirects for migrations
  • On-page fixes: titles, descriptions, headings, internal links
  • A content plan built from search demand
  • Local search profiles for businesses that serve an area
  • Reporting from Search Console, server logs and field data

Not included

  • Link buying, private blog networks or anything else that breaks search engine guidelines
  • Guaranteed rankings. No one can promise them honestly.

Standards and stack.

The public frameworks we measure the work against, and the platforms we run it on.

Standards we work to

Google Search Essentials
Technical requirements and spam policies; nothing we do breaks them.
Core Web Vitals
Page experience judged on field data, not on a lab score alone.
Schema.org
Structured data validated against rich result requirements.
Quality Rater Guidelines
E-E-A-T in practice: real authors, sources and dates on every article.

How we choose tools

Certified engineers
AWS Solutions Architect, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Google Cloud and security certifications, held by the engineers who do the work.
Licensed tools only
Every tool comes from an approved list: commercial software under its licence, or open source under a standard licence. Nothing cracked, nothing unlicensed.
Your platform first
Where you already run something that works, we build on it.
Not on the list?
Ask. Engineers who know the fundamentals pick up a new tool quickly, and we will tell you plainly if we have not used it before.

Platforms and tools we work with

Search engine tools

  • Google Search Console
  • Bing Webmaster Tools
  • IndexNow
  • Google Merchant Center

Crawl and audit

  • Screaming Frog SEO Spider
  • Screaming Frog Log File Analyser
  • Sitebulb
  • JetOctopus
  • Lumar
  • Botify
  • Oncrawl

Research and rank tracking

  • Ahrefs
  • Semrush
  • Moz Pro
  • SE Ranking
  • AccuRanker
  • Google Keyword Planner
  • Google Trends
  • AlsoAsked

Performance

  • PageSpeed Insights
  • Chrome UX Report
  • Lighthouse
  • WebPageTest
  • DebugBear

Measurement

  • Google Analytics 4
  • Google Tag Manager
  • BigQuery
  • Looker Studio
  • Microsoft Clarity
  • Matomo

Structured data

  • Schema.org
  • JSON-LD
  • Rich Results Test
  • Schema Markup Validator

Local search

  • Google Business Profile
  • Bing Places
  • Apple Business
  • BrightLocal
  • Whitespark

AI answers we test against

  • Google AI Overviews
  • Google AI Mode
  • ChatGPT search
  • Perplexity
  • Microsoft Copilot

Platforms

  • WordPress
  • Yoast SEO
  • Rank Math
  • Shopify
  • Webflow
  • Next.js
  • Headless CMS

Where we have done it.

Client cases name the industry and the stack, never the client.

Minute Notary is a notary office in Ottawa. We designed, built and run the platform behind it: booking and payment, secure documents, a workspace for notaries, and seals anyone can verify online.

09Custom software01Website02Hosting03SEO10AI & automation

How to start.

A fixed, small first engagement, then the model that fits the rest.

A first engagement

Technical SEO audit

A crawl of the whole site, a read of Search Console and, where you have them, your server logs.

You receive

  • Index coverage and crawl waste, explained
  • Rendering and Core Web Vitals by template
  • Issues ranked by impact and effort
  • A 90-day plan

What we need from you

  • Search Console and GA4 access
  • Access to the CMS or code repository
  • Server logs, if you can export them
  • Any keyword research you already have

Then, the model that fits

  • Fixed price

    Defined projects: a website, an assessment, a migration stage

    One price for that scope

  • Time and materials

    Ongoing improvement, support and discovery work

    Billed for the time used

Common questions.

How long until we see results?

Technical fixes can show within weeks. Content usually takes months to rank. Anyone who promises a date for a ranking is guessing.

Will a redesign hurt our rankings?

It can, when URLs change without a plan. With a redirect map, checks on staging and monitoring after launch, the risk is managed rather than hoped away.

Do you build links?

We earn them, with content worth citing and digital PR where it fits. We do not buy links or use networks that break search engine guidelines.

What about AI search?

AI answers draw on the same foundations: crawlable pages, clear entities, structured data and content that states facts plainly. We track where you are cited in AI answers alongside classic rankings.

Do you fix the issues, or only report them?

We fix them. Because we also build websites, changes ship as pull requests or CMS edits and are checked in the index afterwards. If your own developers prefer to make them, findings arrive as tickets they can act on, ranked by impact and effort.

Guides from the blog.

Plain-language articles on seo, with their sources.

SEO15 min read

YouTube SEO: how to optimize your videos for YouTube and Google Search

Optimize YouTube videos with accurate titles, descriptions, thumbnails and chapters, earn watch time, and give Google a watch page with VideoObject markup.

Updated

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AI-generated content in SEO: how to use it without a Google penalty

Google does not penalize content for being AI-generated; it acts on low-value pages made at scale to rank. What its rules say, and a workflow within them.

Updated

SEO20 min read

SEO tips for websites: a 14-point checklist to help you rank higher

Practical SEO tips for websites, ordered by impact: indexing first, then titles, content, Core Web Vitals and structured data, each with a way to check it.

Updated

SEO15 min read

AI Overviews in Google Search: how they choose sources and how to appear

AI Overviews and AI Mode link indexed pages that can show a snippet. How Google picks those sources, and the controls that decide whether your pages appear.

Updated

SEO17 min read

How to improve SEO: a process to audit, prioritize, fix and measure

Improve SEO as a loop: record a baseline in Search Console, audit the site, rank fixes by impact and effort, fix templates, then measure over weeks.

Updated

All SEO articles →

Start with a conversation.

Tell us what you run and what is getting in the way. You get a reply within 24 hours.

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